Pars Today

France’s top diplomat has called for an “immediate” ceasefire in the Israeli war on the Gaza Strip as the country’s Foreign Ministry condemned the bombing of a residential building that killed one of its staff in the besieged Palestinian territory.

Catherine Colonna on Sunday pressed for an “immediate and durable” truce in Israel’s war on Gaza and said Paris was “deeply concerned” over the situation in the war-ravaged territory.

“Too many civilians are being killed,” the French foreign minister said during a meeting in Tel Aviv with her Israeli counterpart Eli Cohen while discussing the occupying regime’s brutal onslaught on Gaza since early October.

In a statement earlier, the French Foreign Ministry censured Israel’s assassination of one of its staffers in Gaza and demanded that the regime’s authorities shed full light on the circumstances of the deadly incident.

An Israeli bombing hit a building on the southern city of Rafah on Wednesday evening, killing a French consulate employee and 10 others who had been sheltering with colleagues and their family members in the residential area.

The employee had been working with the French government in Gaza since 2002, and some of his family members had already been evacuated from Gaza, the French Foreign Ministry said in the statement, offering condolences.

“France condemns this bombing of a residential building which caused the death of many other civilians. We demand that all light be shed by the Israeli authorities on the circumstances of this bombing, as quickly as possible,” the statement added.

Shortly before her arrival in Tel Aviv, Colonna also condemned increasing attacks by Israeli settlers on Palestinians in the occupied West Bank.

“Since October 7, unfortunately, some settlers, driven by their ideological blindness… have committed crimes” against Palestinians, she said, adding, “These settlers must be punished.”

ME